Saturday, February 26, 2011

US GLOBAL COMBATANT COMMANDSSee post on US military bases around the world.

Dick: I just discovered this in Pfaff's book. So I googled it and found what I think is amazing but fits with all the Imperialism stuff we have learned about our government and why there are no funds for anything else.Kaye

Areas of Responsibility

President George W. Bush and Secretary Robert Gates meeting with the joint chiefs and combatant commanders.A Unified Combatant Command (UCC) is a United States joint military command that is composed of forces from two or more services and has a broad and continuing mission.[1] These commands are established to provide effective command and control of U.S. military forces, regardless of branch of service, in peace and war.[2] They are organized either on a geographical basis (known as "Area of Responsibility", AOR) or on a functional basis. Each UCC is commanded by a combatant commander (CCDR), who is a four-star general or admiral. UCCs are "joint" commands with specific badges denoting their affiliation.The Unified Command Plan (UCP) is updated annually in conjunction with the DoD Fiscal Year and can modify areas of responsibility or combatant command alignments or assignments.[3] As of January 2008, there were ten Unified Combatant Commands as specified in Title 10 and the latest annual UCP. Six have regional responsibilities, and four have functional responsibilities.

HISTORYThe current system of unified commands in the US military emerged during World War II with the establishment of geographic theaters of operation composed of forces from multiple service branches that reported to a single commander who was supported by a joint staff.[4] A unified command structure also existed to coordinate British and American military forces operating under the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which was composed the British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff.[5] In the European Theater, Allied military forces fell under the command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). After SHAEF was dissolved at the end of the war, the American forces were unified under a single command, the US Forces, European Theater (USFET), commanded by General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Unified commands in the Pacific Theater proved more difficult to organize as neither General of the Army Douglas MacArthur nor Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz were willing to become subordinate to the other. Nevertheless, the Joint Chiefs of Staff continued to advocate in favor of establishing permanent unified commands, and President Harry S. Truman approved the first plan on 14 December 1946.[6] Known as the "Outline Command Plan," it would become the first in a series of Unified Command Plans.

Although not part of the original plan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) also created specified commands that had broad and continuing missions but were composed of forces from only one service.[7] Examples include the U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean and the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command. Like the unified commands, the specified commands reported directly to the JCS instead of their respective service chiefs.[8] Although these commands have not existed since the Strategic Air Command was disestablished in 1992, federal law still contains a provision authorizing the President to establish a new specified command.[9]Under the original plan, each of the unified commands operated with one of the service chiefs (the Chief of Staff of the Army or Air Force, or Chief of Naval Operations) serving as an executive agent representing the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[10] This arrangement was formalized on 21 April 1948 as part of a policy paper titled the "Function of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff" (informally known as the "Key West Agreement").[11]. The responsibilities of the unified commands were further expanded on 7 September 1948 when the commanders' authority was extended to include the coordination of the administrative and logistical functions in addition to their combat responsibilities.[12]

The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 clarified and codified responsibilities that commanders-in-chief (CINCs) and their predecessors (theater or area commanders) had undertaken since World War II, and which were first given legal status in 1947.The U.S. Atlantic Command became the Joint Forces Command in the 1990s after the Soviet threat to the North Atlantic had disappeared and the need rose for an integrating and experimentation command for forces in the continental United States.Regional CINCs were created in order to have a local supreme commander who could exercise unified command and control across service boundaries, ideally eliminating or diminishing interservice rivalries. CINCs reported directly to the United States Secretary of Defense, and through him to the President of the United States. One of the best known CINCs was Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) during Operation Desert Storm.

On 24 October 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that in accordance with Title 10 of the US Code (USC), the title of "Commander-in-Chief" would thereafter be reserved for the President, consistent with the terms of Article II of the United States Constitution. Thereafter, the military CINCs would be known as "combatant commanders", as heads of the Unified Combatant Commands.The sixth geographical combatant command for Africa (USAFRICOM) was approved and established in 2007. It operated under U.S. European Command during its first year. It transitioned to independent Unified Command Status October 2008. In 2009, it focused on synchronizing hundreds of activities inherited from three regional commands that previously coordinated U.S. military relations in Africa.[13]

[edit] Former Unified and Specified CommandsSince the first Unified Command Plan was approved on 14 December 1946, several unified and specific combatant commands have been established and disestablished.[14] Some of the commands existed before they were officially established as unified or specified commands, or continued to exist after they were disestablished.EmblemCommandAcronymTypeEstablishedDisestablishedCommentsStrategic Air CommandSACSpecified1946-12-141992-05-31Duties assumed by USSTRATCOMAlaska CommandALCOMUnified1947-01-011975-06-30Became part of USPACOMFar East CommandFECOMUnified1947-01-011957-07-01Became part of USPACOMCaribbean CommandCARIBCOMUnified1947-11-011963-06-06Replaced by USSOUTHCOMU.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and MediterraneanNELMSpecified1947-11-011963-12-01Became part of USEUCOMAtlantic CommandLANTCOMUnified1947-12-011999-09-31Replaced by USJFCOMUS Northeast CommandUSNECUnified1950-10-011956-09-01US Air Forces, EuropeUSAFESpecified1951-01-221956-07-01Became part of USEUCOMContinental Air Defense CommandCONADUnified

The operational chain of command runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the combatant commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may transmit communications to the Commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands from the President and Secretary of Defense and advises both on potential courses of action, but does not exercise direct military command over any combatant forces. Under Goldwater-Nichols, the service chiefs (also four stars in rank) are charged with the responsibility of the "strategic direction, unified operation of combatant commands, and the integration of all land, naval, and air forces in an efficient "unified combatant command" force. Furthermore, the services' "civilian" secretaries are responsible to "organize, train and equip" forces for use by the combatant commands and also do not exercise any operational control over their forces.

Each combatant command can be led by a general or flag officer from any of the services. Most commands have traditional service affiliations, but in recent years, non-traditional appointments have become more common. EUCOM was traditionally an Army command with USAF generals on occasion, but was held by a Marine from 2003 through 2006. CENTCOM was traditionally an Army and Marine command but William J. Fallon, commander from 2007 through 2008, was a Navy admiral. PACOM has always been commanded by a Navy admiral due to the wide expanse of ocean, although Air Force generals have been nominated for the post. U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM) was also a traditional Navy assignment until it was successively commanded by Marine, Army, and Air Force generals, thereby becoming the first to have had commanders from all four services (USACOM was redesignated as JFCOM in 1999).[16] CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM were traditionally Army general positions until the Marines received their first CinC assignments. This led the way for General Pace, a Marine, to become the first Marine Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ultimately Chairman. CCDRs are strong candidates for either position.Other changes and proposalsAt some points, there have been proposals to create some sort of Reserve Affairs Worldwide Support command for the Reserve and National Guard...

Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2005 documentary film about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era eponymous propaganda movies commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers.

Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 20 January 2005, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2005, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

SynopsisWhy We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex (originally called the military–industrial–congressional complex by Eisenhower) and its fifty-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson, politician Richard Perle, neoconservative commentator William Kristol, writer Gore Vidal, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione.

Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee child from Vietnam in 1975.

Producer's list included "more than a dozen organizations, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names.[1] The Sundance Institute did, however, provide completion funding.[1] Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."[1]

Contributors and representatives[edit] PoliticiansSenator John McCainElected to the United States Senate in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war.

Richard Perle, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.

William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly StandardAn influential man in U.S. politics since the 1970s, he founded the Weekly Standard magazine in 1995, and co-founded the Project for the New American Century think tank in 1997.

Charles Lewis, Center for Public IntegrityFounder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies

[edit] CiviliansJoseph Cirincione, Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceA senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C.

Gwynne Dyer, Military HistorianHe is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs.

Susan Eisenhower, Granddaughter of President EisenhowerSenior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences.

John Eisenhower, Son of President Eisenhower, Military HistorianA military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General (AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.

Chalmers Johnson, Central Intelligence Agency 1967-1973, Political ScientistWith a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute. An academic at the University of California, he has written many articles and books.

Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department / Vietnam veteranVietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.

William SolomonTwenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon][2] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.

Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military AnalystLehigh University-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.

Gore Vidal, Author of Imperial AmericaWriter, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.

[edit] Military participants'Fuji' and 'Tooms'U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.

Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter SquadronVice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing of the U.S. Air Force

Karen KwiatkowskiA retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel of the Pentagon working with the National Security Agency.

James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air ForceTwentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force

Nguyet Anh DuongInventor of the thermobaric bunker buster bomb.

[edit] DVD commentatorsColonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin PowellFrom 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.[3]

[edit] See alsoList of American films of 2005 Military-industrial complex Military Keynesianism [edit] References^ a b c "Why We Fight" By: Jensen, Elizabeth, Television Week, 6/4/2007, Vol. 26, Issue 23. ^ http://www.dvidshub.net/index.php?script=images/images_gallery.php&action=viewimage&fid=108095 ^ "Interview transcript of the PBS program NOW with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson about pre-war intelligence". Public Affairs Television. February 3, 2006. http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/wilkerson.html. Retrieved 2007-08-08. [edit] External linksWhy We Fight official site at Sony Pictures Classics. Interview with director Eugene Jarecki at Now Playing magazine. Why We Fight BBC's Storyville page on Why We Fight Why We Fight at the Internet Movie Database Why We Fight at Allmovie Why We Fight on Lower Manhattan Project, a site dedicated to 9/11 culture.

Friday, February 25, 2011

TRUE COSTS OF FUEL: MILITARY PROTECTION OF US SUPPLIES, BASES AROUND THE WORLD, US ARMED SERVICES AT WAR FOR OILThis study was published in 1998, but its significance is great because it shows that over a decade ago scientists knew the truth about warming and its causes and were denouncing our leaders for their failure to act on the knowledge. Dick To read the entire study go to:http://www.icta.org/doc/Real%20Price%20of%20Gasoline.pdfINTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGYASSESSMENT“The Real Price of Gasoline”REPORT NO. 3AN ANALYSIS OF THE HIDDEN EXTERNAL COSTS CONSUMERS PAY TO FUEL THEIR AUTOMOBILESForewordThis report by the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) represents the third in a series of studies designed to assess the environmental and social impacts of transportation technology.These reports are meant to aid policy makers and the public in their ongoing deliberations concerning thefuture course of transportation in the United States.This particular report contains an in-depth analysis of the many external costs associated with theconsumption of gasoline. This report found that these costs fall into four broad categories and are passed on to both gasoline users and nonusers by way of higher taxes, insurances costs, and retail prices for items other than gasoline. Effectively, the cost of gasoline is substantially higher than the price consumerspay at the pump, even though the majority of this cost is hidden from the public.The CTA was formed in 1994 in order to assist the general public and policy makers in betterunderstanding how technology affects society. The CTA is devoted to fully exploring the economic,ethical, social, environmental, and political impacts of technology or technological systems. Using thisholistic form of analysis, the CTA provides the public with independent, timely, and comprehensive informationabout the potential impacts of technology. The CTA is also committed to initiating appropriatelegal, grassroots, public education, and legislative responses relevant to its assessment findings.Andrew KimbrellExecutive DirectorInternational Center for Technology AssessmentWashington, D.C.: November 1998[I excised a long section of the beginning in order to go straight to military costs of gasoline. As you read, remember the 1998 date.]

MILITARY The United States military plays a crucial role inensuring the free flow of oil on the world market.It is important to realize that the cost of defending oilinfrastructure around the world is not cheap. Althoughhistorically low gasoline prices at the pump have encouragedmany US consumers to embrace trendy gasguzzling light trucks and sport utility vehicles, forsakingconservation efforts for wasteful convenience, allAmericans foot the bill for increasing foreign oil dependenceand the military costs (both in monetary andsocial terms) associated with securing a steady supplyof oil. The United States economy remains heavilydependent on oil and is likely to become increasinglydependent on foreign oil as domestic productiondwindles over the next decade.In recognition of the country.s overwhelming dependenceon the free flow of foreign oil, the US governmenthas enacted measures designed to insulatethe country against future supply shocks. Painful lessonslearned during the oil crises of the 1970s led tothe creation of institutions like the Strategic PetroleumReserve (SPR) and the International Energy Agency(IEA), which would, in theory, act to ensure the continuedsupply of oil. Most notably, the United Statesmaintains a military presence in oil-sensitive areas.However, the United States has done astonishingly littlein the way of demand-side management (DSM) tocurb America.s growing appetite for oil (which canonly be satiated by an increase in imports). The vastamounts of money spent on capital, infrastructure, andsecurity for what is in reality a .quick fix. dwarfs themeager investment being made in alternative energyresources and technologies.

The full military costs of defending petroleumresources are quite difficult to estimate due to thenature of global security and the synergy between energysupplies and economic security. While most industriesoperating in volatile parts of the world areresponsible for arranging for private security forces toprotect their investments, infrastructure, and personnel,the petroleum industry is able to externalize thecosts of protection. Obviously, the entire annual budgetfor US military operations of approximately $260billion cannot be attributed to the costs associated withenergy security.51 There are other strategic interestsat play, even in oil rich regions like the Persian Gulf orformer-Soviet Central Asia. The number of soldiersor the amount of military firepower present in a givenregion does not necessarily reveal the actual cost ofprotecting petroleum resources. However, it does nottake a genius to recognize that if the main productshipped out of the Persian Gulf consisted of carbohydratesand not hydrocarbons, America.s strategic interestsin the region would be vastly different.Many researchers have attempted to accuratelydetermine the cost of America.s defense of oil productionand shipment throughout the world and specificallyin the Persian Gulf. In the aftermath of theGulf War, several analysts have also estimated the annualizedcost of combat. In some years, the cost of

PROTECTION COSTS INVOLVED IN OIL SHIPMENTAND MOTOR VEHICLE SERVICESUp to $96.3 billion in US defense spending each year may godirectly towards protecting overseas oil sources.15defending oil interests could be quite low, while in otheryears, tens of billions of dollars were spent on combat.Wahl of ILSR estimates a plausible (and ratherconservative) range of annual expenses devoted to routineprotection of oil resources at 10 to 25 percent ofthe annual defense budget ($26 to $65 billion).52 Moststudies on the subject tend to estimate costs at thehigh end of this range. Based on a survey of literatureon the subject in 1992, the Congressional ResearchService found a range of estimates from $56 to $73billion.53A recent report prepared for Greenpeace byKoplow and Martin, provides a rigorous examinationof oil protection costs associated with the Persian Gulfregion. They estimate the cost of oil defense for theMiddle East at $10.5 to $23.3 billion (1995 dollars).However, it should be noted that these figures are relativelyconservative. They assume that the cost of protectingoil interests is equal in value to preserving regionalstability and preventing the emergence of regionalhegemonic powers. It is not unrealistic to attributea majority of Persian Gulf defense costs to oil,which would result in an estimate closer to $70 billion(the total annual cost of defense commitments in theMiddle East is approximately $80 billion).54In addition to the costs of maintaining the US militarypresence in the Middle East, it is necessary tofactor in the cost of combat. The Persian Gulf War,otherwise known as operations Desert Storm andDesert Shield, is estimated to have cost over $100billion.55 The United States did persuade its allies tohelp pay for the cost of the war. However, out of allycommitments to contribute $54 billion only about $37billion has actually been paid.56 If one assumes thatcombat on the scale of the Gulf War will keep thingsrelatively quiet for about ten years, then the annualizedcost of combat is approximately $4.6 to $6.3 billion.Estimated annual cost of oil defensesubsidies:$55 to $96.3 billion in 1997 dollars57The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) hasbeen a flawed and little-utilized insurance policy of lastresort for the oil-dependent American economy. Createdin 1975 in response to the turmoil associated withthe oil price shocks of 1973 and 1974, the SPR isOperations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-1991, in which the United States and its allies defended oil-rich Kuwait following ahostile invasion by Iraqi military forces, cost upwards of $100 billion. US allies have pledged to pay $54 billion of the Persian Gulf War.scost, but the US has only managed to collect some $34 billion of this total to date.16intended to protect the United States from interruptionsin the flow of oil caused by political, military, ornatural causes. American taxpayers contribute an annual.premium. of up to $5.7 billion to reduce the riskof oil-shock-induced economic devastation. Giventhe United States. growing appetite for imported oil(as domestic reserves continue to steadily shrink), theSPR may be a wise investment for American oil consumers.The petroleum industry has little incentive toprovide safeguards against price hikes and supplyshocks. It is unlikely that an apparatus like the SPRwould exist without government intervention.The SPR has roughly 590 million barrels of crudeoil stored in underground salt caverns along the coastlineof the Gulf of Mexico. Oil from the SPR has beenused for emergency purposes only once, during thePersian Gulf War in 1991 (there was some controversyat the time as to whether it was necessary to selloff some of the reserve). The Department of Energy(DOE), which administers the SPR, spends $200 millionannually on management and operation costs.Taxpayers currently face the additional liability of financingover $100 million for decommissioning andmoving part of the reserve because of problems withwater intrusion and contamination (annualized cost of$5 to $10 million).58By far, the largest cost associated with the SPRresults from forgone interest on the value of stockpiledoil. Billions of taxpayer dollars are invested instores of oil, rather than ready for use in sustainableand environmentally friendly energy programs. Someof this loss could be recouped if oil were to increasedramatically in value. However, a large percentage ofSPR oil was purchased at a much higher price thanthe oil is presently worth. The average acquisition costper barrel of oil stored in the SPR between 1976 and1995 was $27.30.59 The average market price ofthat oil was $17.20 in 1995, representing a capitalloss on acquisition of almost $6 billion.60 With thecurrent market price of oil below $12 per barrel, theloss increases to more than $9 billion. However, it ispossible that prices will be higher at the point when oilfrom the reserve might be sold.The DOE itself notes that .the United States isunique among oil stockpiling in assigning all of the costof the reserve to the general taxpayer. Most otherstockpiling countries partially shift the cost burden tothe oil industry by requiring their oil companies to maintaininventories in excess of working needs..61 TheGreenpeace report estimates the total taxpayer lossof the SPR from 1976 through 1995 at $57.5 billionand estimates the total annual cost at $5.4 billion in1995 dollars.Estimated annual cost of the SPR:$5.7 billion in 1997 dollars62The Weeks Island Storage Site, located 95miles southwest of New Orleans and formerlyused as a salt mine by the Morton Salt Co.,now serves as an integral part of the StrategicPetroleum Reserve, with the capacity to storeup to 70 million barrels of oil. The graph onthe following page represents SPR fundingtotals for 1976 through 1997.1718There are other protection costs associatedwith gasoline usage in the United States that are pickedup by general taxpayers rather than oil producers andconsumers.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

SECURE BORDERS FOR ISRAEL, END OF ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE AND RETURN TO 1967 BORDERS, Information and Calls to Action by Dick Bennett, 2-22-11

Contents
Contact President Obama for UN Settlement Resolution
Calls to Action in March, March 30 BDS DAY of Action
The Palestine Papers and Obama
The Goldstone Report
US Campaign to Stop the Occupation
Former Israeli Troops Oppose Occupation
Presbyterian Church Statement
Videos
Books

Action: Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution. Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, and Churches for Middle East Peace are speaking out. Add your voice.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
“Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
Is this potentially a winnable fight? We argue it is:
Can US Support UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements? Yes We Can!
This is a winnable fight if we move the debate beyond the usual suspects.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/can-us-support-un-resolut_b_813233.html

Take Action on March 30th:
Join the 3rd Global BDS Day of Action! (from Anna Baltzer)

Above: Palestinian poster announcing Land Day, 1985.
Dear Dick,

As popular uprisings continue across the Middle East, boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) organizing is heating up in the United States!

March 2011 promises to be a month full of creative events and actions, starting with Israeli Apartheid Week and wrapping up with a BDS Day of Action on March 30th, Palestinian Land Day. Please be a part of it!

Palestinian Land Day, "Yom al-Ard," commemorates the Israeli military's 1976 killing of six young Palestinians as they protested the Israeli government's seizure of Palestinian land. The day has since become a symbol of Palestinian resistance to land theft, colonization, occupation and apartheid.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is calling on supporters around the world to unite in a March 30th Day of Action by organizing BDS activities supporting: divestment; consumer, cultural and academic boycott; legal action and media activism. Click here to read the full call.

Not sure what to do? There's something for everyone! Here are just a few ideas:

Host a "Stolen Beauty" House Party. Still cold outside? Gather friends and laptop computers for some online activism to promote the campaign to Boycott Ahava. Enjoy tea, cookies, and good company while you publicize Ahava's occupation profiteering. Click here to write CODEPINK for details.

Gather signatures for the "TIAA-CREF: Divest from Occupation" Campaign. Pass around this petition at work, at school, in your faith community or any institution where TIAA-CREF retirement plans are offered. Last fall, one professor at the University of Massachusetts collected 80 signatures from colleagues and staff. Can you beat that?

Write an article about BDS for your local newspaper, campus publication or faith community newsletter. Click here for an example from the divestment campaign at the University of California at San Diego. Click here for a clear, compelling piece by Naomi Klein.

Take your BDS campaign to the next level, with a flash mob, using the US Campaign's new BDS Flash Mob Step-by-Step How-To Kit!

Host a speaker to talk about BDS. Get a speaker from the Speakers Bureau of the Palestine Freedom Project, a US Campaign member group.

Host a public film screening to garner support for a local BDS campaign. Palestine Online Store, our member group, has a comprehensive selection here.

Keep your eyes peeled for productions fit for cultural boycott. For example, Adalah-NY, our member group, and others are preparing to boycott productions by the Israeli Philharmonic.
Many more creative activities can connect you with a promising global movement to end Israeli apartheid. Street theatre! Poetry readings! Even just holding a sign that reads "Boycott Israeli Apartheid" on a crowded street corner will build awareness toward future BDS campaigns.

Write to bdsdayofaction@bdsmovement.net to register your action on the global Day of Action calendar. Be sure to add your event to the US Campaign's online calendar, for publication in our biweekly email newsletter, Occupation End Notes.

As we promote BDS actions on Land Day, our government is preventing Palestinian leaders of nonviolent activism from advocating BDS in the United States. Last week the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem delayed a visa for Omar Barghouti, effectively canceling a spring tour to promote his book, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. Barghouti was the keynote speaker at our National Annual Organizers' Conference two years ago in Chicago.

Dick, click here for more information and ideas to take action in preparation for Land Day, and support Palestinians' human rights on their land!

This is an article of major importance. Ali Abunimah has been given access to the "Palestine Papers" - a trove of documents
Al Jazeera has gotten hold of by way of a leak. In this piece he examines and analyses the way the US position in regards to the 1967 border
has shifted in an ominous way under the leadership of Obama.

By effectively repudiating the Road Map "which has formed the basis of the "peace process" since 2003", writes Abunimah, the US under Obama "has backed away even from commitments made by the George W. Bush administration, and blown an irreparable hole in the already threadbare "two state solution".
The article demonstrates US refusal to stand by the international consensus regarding the 1967 border, and thereby opens the door to Israel's less-than-hidden ambitions to re-draw the border in such a way that many of its own Palestinian citizens will find themselves removed to "Palestine", so that Israel can keep its mission of creating an ethnically pure "Jewish State". Needless to say, the subjects of this ethnic cleansing are not to be consulted in the matter.

Abunimah concludes by saying: "This is not only catastrophic for Palestinian rights and the prospects for justice, but represents a return to nineteenth century notions, banished in the wake of two world wars, that population groups can be traded between states without their consent as if they were mere pieces on a chess board."

THE GOLDSTONE REPORT
Naomi Klein, “Goldstone’s Legacy for Israel.” The Nation (Feb. 14, 2011). “The Goldstone Report, with its uncompromising moral consistency, has revived the old-fashioned principles of universal human rights and international law….” Important essay.

US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION
January 14, 2011
“King laid the groundwork. Let us keep building!”
Dear Dick,
The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one we truly enjoy commemorating. To reflect on King's life and work is to find hope in the future, and reverence for grueling campaigns past.
Dr. King at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967
As we approach Dr. King's birthday, at a moment when Palestinians and many Israelis are mourning the Israeli military's killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah with U.S.-made tear gas during a nonviolent West Bank protest conducted in the spirit of MLK...

...and also commemorating the 1,400 dead after the Israeli military's attrocities in Gaza two years ago...
...and while our own country is mourning the dead and injured in Tucson...

We remember the lessons of Dr. King.

We remember his wise linkage of the three evils of poverty, racism, and militarism, and his understanding that fighting for civil rights and racial justice in our own country requires all of us to fight against war abroad at the same time. (Click here to read or listen to King's magnum opus on the subject, "Beyond Vietnam.")

In those days, it was Vietnam. Today it is Afghanistan and Iraq and, yes, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is funded, armed and enabled by our taxes and our government.

We affirm Dr. King's commitment to undoing those three evils together. We recognize that the $30 billion in military aid that the U.S. has promised Israel over a 10-year period must be better used (for example, to retrain 600,000 U.S. workers for new green jobs).

We understand that racism lies at the root of Israeli apartheid, now cemented in the segregation of everything from roads to courts of law. We know that crushing material poverty defines life in Gaza, due to Israel's U.S.-backed illegal siege that still eliminates the possibility to export goods and earn the basic income to rebuild a society.

The antidote to all three evils is creative nonviolent action. As the US Campaign turns 10 years old this year, we reaffirm our mission to build a nonviolent social movement that will defeat U.S. support for Israel's violent occupation and apartheid rule over Palestinians.

This coming weekend, while reflecting upon King's legacy and re-listening to his messages, let us rededicate our efforts to the emergence of a peaceful, just Middle East and a peaceful, just world.

In these efforts we are profoundly grateful to have you with us.

Yours,
Felicia Eaves & David Wildman
Co-Chairs

The US Campaign aims to change U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 43-year occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and that deny equal rights for all.
US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION | PO BOX 21539 | WASHINGTON, DC 20009
202-332-0994 | USCAMPAIGN@ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG | WWW.ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG

BREAKING THE SILENCE
Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence is a recently organized group of former Israeli toops—men and women—who are speaking up against the immoral and illegal behavior of the military in the occupied territories. See “Female Israeli Soldiers Breat the Silence,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010) 41.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ISRAEL, OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, AND MIDDLE EAST The Middle East Study Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) released its full report on Israel and Palestine on March 10, 2010, entitled “Breaking Down the Walls.” The report includes a call for a dismantlement of the occupation apparatus, including a stop to all settlement expansion. See “Presbyterian Church (USA) Unveils Report on Middle East Peace,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010).

Video: "Occupation Has No Future"
--Through conversations with Israeli conscientious objectors, former soldiers, and Palestinians living under occupation, the film creates a survey of the current atmosphere in the State of Israel and the West Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-G5D7bLx1s

FILMS
--FPL HAS FILM PROMISES ON CHILDREN LIVING IN DIVERSE AREAS OF Israel and Palestine. Shot between 1997-2000.
--Budrus by Julia Bacha (2010) about a Palestinian village that resists Israeli occupation nonviolently, led by an ordinary citizen Ayed Morrar. Rev. In These Times (Nov. 2010): Bacha “lets the dynamic of resistance vs. militaristic oppression…speak for itself.”
--Miral, dir. By US/Jewish artist Julian Schnabel, to be released in 2011 by US/Jewish movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Rev. The Nation (Nov. 8, 2010). Film about the Dar Al-Tifl orphhanage, established in Jerusalem by Palestinian Hind Husseini, following Israel’s 1948 War for Independence.
----“American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein,” documentary film by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010). The filmmakers began filming in 1998, and accumulated 300 hours of footage, from which the film was made.

2010-2011 BOOKS: NONVIOLENT OPPOSITION TO THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTIANS
--Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation Ed by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin. Berghahn Books , 2010.
--Adelgang, Osie Gabriel, ed. Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation. Whole Earth P, 2010. Rev. YES! (Winter 2011). A collection of personal essays by 14 women activists opposed to the human costs of “Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians from their homeland.” “…true stories that stress human rights over political expedience.”
--Bayoumi, Moustafa, ed. Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict. OR Books, 2010. The failed flotilla achieved global protest and demand that Israel halt its siege.
--Finkelstein, Norman. This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. Rev. The Washington Report on ME Affairs (Nov. 2010).: Finkelstein “demonstrates, as did the Goldstone Report and numerous human rights observers, that the Israel Defense Forces (IdF) was reckless of civilian casualties.”
--Goldberg, Alfred. Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide. Knopf, 2006. Rev. NYT Book Review (Nov. 12, 2006). About a friendship between an Arab and Goldberg, but criticizes G’s inability to tell his friend’s story. “The Middle East will remain one big prison as long as there
--Born a Refugee by Dixiane Hallaj, 2010. Fiction Tells the story of four brothers and their widowed mother living in the claustrophobic environment of their two room house in the Kalandia. More info at:http://radaris.com/p/Dixiane/Hallaj/
--Kaufman-Lacusta, Maxine. Refusing to Be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israelli Occupation. Ithaca P (UK), 2010. Rev. The Catholic Worker (Oct. Nov. 2010): “…material gleaned from many interviews, with a somewhat greater emphasis on Palestinian nonviolent activists, because their work is so little khnown.” Mubarak Awad, Sami Awad, Muhammad Jadarat, May Rosenfeld, Ido Khenin, Mustafa Shawkat Samha. Includes discussion of two ongoing nonviolent campaigns: the joint Israeli and Palestinian activism against the Wall, and the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bil’in, and four brief essays. Also rev. Fellowship (Fall 2010).
--Letters from Palestine: Palestinians Speak Out about Their Lives, Their Country, and the Power of Nonviolence. Kenneth Ring and Ghassan Abdullah. Wheatmark, 2010. A collection of 30 personal stories from Palestinians, inside and outside the occupied territories, that provide penetrating insights into their daily lives and thoughts.
--The Much Too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller
The official web site for The Much Too Promised Land, America's elusive search for Arab-Israeli peace, a nonfiction book by Aaron David Miller.
www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/muchtoopromisedland/ -
--Oz, Amos. How to Cure a Fanatic. 4th ed. Princeton UP, 2010. 2 essays and an interview. Oz and other Israeli writers have advocated for the Palestinian state since 1967.
--Polakow-Suransky, Sasha. The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Rev. Forward (6-18-10). Documents extent of Israel’s “secret relationship” with apartheid South Africa.
--Qumsiyeh, Mazin. Popular Resistance in Palestine: AHistory of Hope and Empowerment, 2011. . Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May-June 2010), “Mazin Qumsiyeh on the History and Practice of Nonviolent Palestinian Resistance.” http://www.qumsiyeh.org/popularresistanceinpalestine/ ). “I am planning a trip to the US in March”.
--Rhodes, Richard. The Twilight of the Bombs. Documents the current nuclear threat in the Middle East and North Korea; concludes an exhaustive, multi-volume history of nuclear weaponry, which he began in 1986 with The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
--ALICE WALKER, Alice Walker on “Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel”
Alice Walker was the first African American woman to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for fiction: author, poet and activist. . She was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer for her novel The Color Purple. She was interviewed by Amy Goodman April 13, 2010, about her new book Overcoming Speechlessness. One section of the book is about her visit to the West Bank and Gaza and her strong disapproval of Israeli tyranny and violence against the Palestinians. The interview includes a clip of her visit to Gaza following the Israeli onslaught in 2009.
--Wiles, Rich. Our Eyes: Photography by the Children and New Generation of Lajee Center. Lajee Center, 2008. Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010). Photos in 2007 by 42 young refugees in the Aida Camp in Bethlehem ages 11 to 18 about their lives. Also from the Lajee Center: The Boy and the Wall.
--“Military historian Geoffrey Wawro has made a valuable new contribution to the scholarship on the US relationship with the Arab/Muslim world. Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East is a must read. US leaders have always seen Israel as a strategic liability but short term domestic electoral imperatives — aka, the lobby — have forced policy makers into uncritical support of the Zionist entity against their better judgment. (Patrick Tyler reaches the same conclusion in his superb A World of Trouble) The costs of this relationship have been staggering. Though it is common for critics to point out the nearly $140 billion that the United States has given Israel in direct aid, the late Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer placed the real costs of US alliance with Israel at over $1.6 trillion between 1973-2002 alone! But the costs to the US economy have been even bigger….” [D: I did not record the name of the reviewer].

SECURE BORDERS FOR ISRAEL, END OF ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE AND RETURN TO 1967 BORDERS, Information and Calls to Action by Dick Bennett, 2-22-11

Contents
Contact President Obama for UN Settlement Resolution
Calls to Action in March, March 30 BDS DAY of Action
The Palestine Papers and Obama
The Goldstone Report
US Campaign to Stop the Occupation
Former Israeli Troops Oppose Occupation
Presbyterian Church Statement
Videos
Books

Action: Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution. Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, and Churches for Middle East Peace are speaking out. Add your voice.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
“Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
Is this potentially a winnable fight? We argue it is:
Can US Support UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements? Yes We Can!
This is a winnable fight if we move the debate beyond the usual suspects.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/can-us-support-un-resolut_b_813233.html

Take Action on March 30th:
Join the 3rd Global BDS Day of Action! (from Anna Baltzer)

Above: Palestinian poster announcing Land Day, 1985.
Dear Dick,

As popular uprisings continue across the Middle East, boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) organizing is heating up in the United States!

March 2011 promises to be a month full of creative events and actions, starting with Israeli Apartheid Week and wrapping up with a BDS Day of Action on March 30th, Palestinian Land Day. Please be a part of it!

Palestinian Land Day, "Yom al-Ard," commemorates the Israeli military's 1976 killing of six young Palestinians as they protested the Israeli government's seizure of Palestinian land. The day has since become a symbol of Palestinian resistance to land theft, colonization, occupation and apartheid.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is calling on supporters around the world to unite in a March 30th Day of Action by organizing BDS activities supporting: divestment; consumer, cultural and academic boycott; legal action and media activism. Click here to read the full call.

Not sure what to do? There's something for everyone! Here are just a few ideas:

Host a "Stolen Beauty" House Party. Still cold outside? Gather friends and laptop computers for some online activism to promote the campaign to Boycott Ahava. Enjoy tea, cookies, and good company while you publicize Ahava's occupation profiteering. Click here to write CODEPINK for details.

Gather signatures for the "TIAA-CREF: Divest from Occupation" Campaign. Pass around this petition at work, at school, in your faith community or any institution where TIAA-CREF retirement plans are offered. Last fall, one professor at the University of Massachusetts collected 80 signatures from colleagues and staff. Can you beat that?

Write an article about BDS for your local newspaper, campus publication or faith community newsletter. Click here for an example from the divestment campaign at the University of California at San Diego. Click here for a clear, compelling piece by Naomi Klein.

Take your BDS campaign to the next level, with a flash mob, using the US Campaign's new BDS Flash Mob Step-by-Step How-To Kit!

Host a speaker to talk about BDS. Get a speaker from the Speakers Bureau of the Palestine Freedom Project, a US Campaign member group.

Host a public film screening to garner support for a local BDS campaign. Palestine Online Store, our member group, has a comprehensive selection here.

Keep your eyes peeled for productions fit for cultural boycott. For example, Adalah-NY, our member group, and others are preparing to boycott productions by the Israeli Philharmonic.
Many more creative activities can connect you with a promising global movement to end Israeli apartheid. Street theatre! Poetry readings! Even just holding a sign that reads "Boycott Israeli Apartheid" on a crowded street corner will build awareness toward future BDS campaigns.

Write to bdsdayofaction@bdsmovement.net to register your action on the global Day of Action calendar. Be sure to add your event to the US Campaign's online calendar, for publication in our biweekly email newsletter, Occupation End Notes.

As we promote BDS actions on Land Day, our government is preventing Palestinian leaders of nonviolent activism from advocating BDS in the United States. Last week the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem delayed a visa for Omar Barghouti, effectively canceling a spring tour to promote his book, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. Barghouti was the keynote speaker at our National Annual Organizers' Conference two years ago in Chicago.

Dick, click here for more information and ideas to take action in preparation for Land Day, and support Palestinians' human rights on their land!

This is an article of major importance. Ali Abunimah has been given access to the "Palestine Papers" - a trove of documents
Al Jazeera has gotten hold of by way of a leak. In this piece he examines and analyses the way the US position in regards to the 1967 border
has shifted in an ominous way under the leadership of Obama.

By effectively repudiating the Road Map "which has formed the basis of the "peace process" since 2003", writes Abunimah, the US under Obama "has backed away even from commitments made by the George W. Bush administration, and blown an irreparable hole in the already threadbare "two state solution".
The article demonstrates US refusal to stand by the international consensus regarding the 1967 border, and thereby opens the door to Israel's less-than-hidden ambitions to re-draw the border in such a way that many of its own Palestinian citizens will find themselves removed to "Palestine", so that Israel can keep its mission of creating an ethnically pure "Jewish State". Needless to say, the subjects of this ethnic cleansing are not to be consulted in the matter.

Abunimah concludes by saying: "This is not only catastrophic for Palestinian rights and the prospects for justice, but represents a return to nineteenth century notions, banished in the wake of two world wars, that population groups can be traded between states without their consent as if they were mere pieces on a chess board."

THE GOLDSTONE REPORT
Naomi Klein, “Goldstone’s Legacy for Israel.” The Nation (Feb. 14, 2011). “The Goldstone Report, with its uncompromising moral consistency, has revived the old-fashioned principles of universal human rights and international law….” Important essay.

US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION
January 14, 2011
“King laid the groundwork. Let us keep building!”
Dear Dick,
The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one we truly enjoy commemorating. To reflect on King's life and work is to find hope in the future, and reverence for grueling campaigns past.
Dr. King at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967
As we approach Dr. King's birthday, at a moment when Palestinians and many Israelis are mourning the Israeli military's killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah with U.S.-made tear gas during a nonviolent West Bank protest conducted in the spirit of MLK...

...and also commemorating the 1,400 dead after the Israeli military's attrocities in Gaza two years ago...
...and while our own country is mourning the dead and injured in Tucson...

We remember the lessons of Dr. King.

We remember his wise linkage of the three evils of poverty, racism, and militarism, and his understanding that fighting for civil rights and racial justice in our own country requires all of us to fight against war abroad at the same time. (Click here to read or listen to King's magnum opus on the subject, "Beyond Vietnam.")

In those days, it was Vietnam. Today it is Afghanistan and Iraq and, yes, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is funded, armed and enabled by our taxes and our government.

We affirm Dr. King's commitment to undoing those three evils together. We recognize that the $30 billion in military aid that the U.S. has promised Israel over a 10-year period must be better used (for example, to retrain 600,000 U.S. workers for new green jobs).

We understand that racism lies at the root of Israeli apartheid, now cemented in the segregation of everything from roads to courts of law. We know that crushing material poverty defines life in Gaza, due to Israel's U.S.-backed illegal siege that still eliminates the possibility to export goods and earn the basic income to rebuild a society.

The antidote to all three evils is creative nonviolent action. As the US Campaign turns 10 years old this year, we reaffirm our mission to build a nonviolent social movement that will defeat U.S. support for Israel's violent occupation and apartheid rule over Palestinians.

This coming weekend, while reflecting upon King's legacy and re-listening to his messages, let us rededicate our efforts to the emergence of a peaceful, just Middle East and a peaceful, just world.

In these efforts we are profoundly grateful to have you with us.

Yours,
Felicia Eaves & David Wildman
Co-Chairs

The US Campaign aims to change U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 43-year occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and that deny equal rights for all.
US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION | PO BOX 21539 | WASHINGTON, DC 20009
202-332-0994 | USCAMPAIGN@ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG | WWW.ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG

BREAKING THE SILENCE
Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence is a recently organized group of former Israeli toops—men and women—who are speaking up against the immoral and illegal behavior of the military in the occupied territories. See “Female Israeli Soldiers Breat the Silence,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010) 41.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ISRAEL, OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, AND MIDDLE EAST The Middle East Study Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) released its full report on Israel and Palestine on March 10, 2010, entitled “Breaking Down the Walls.” The report includes a call for a dismantlement of the occupation apparatus, including a stop to all settlement expansion. See “Presbyterian Church (USA) Unveils Report on Middle East Peace,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010).

Video: "Occupation Has No Future"
--Through conversations with Israeli conscientious objectors, former soldiers, and Palestinians living under occupation, the film creates a survey of the current atmosphere in the State of Israel and the West Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-G5D7bLx1s

FILMS
--FPL HAS FILM PROMISES ON CHILDREN LIVING IN DIVERSE AREAS OF Israel and Palestine. Shot between 1997-2000.
--Budrus by Julia Bacha (2010) about a Palestinian village that resists Israeli occupation nonviolently, led by an ordinary citizen Ayed Morrar. Rev. In These Times (Nov. 2010): Bacha “lets the dynamic of resistance vs. militaristic oppression…speak for itself.”
--Miral, dir. By US/Jewish artist Julian Schnabel, to be released in 2011 by US/Jewish movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Rev. The Nation (Nov. 8, 2010). Film about the Dar Al-Tifl orphhanage, established in Jerusalem by Palestinian Hind Husseini, following Israel’s 1948 War for Independence.
----“American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein,” documentary film by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010). The filmmakers began filming in 1998, and accumulated 300 hours of footage, from which the film was made.

2010-2011 BOOKS: NONVIOLENT OPPOSITION TO THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTIANS
--Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation Ed by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin. Berghahn Books , 2010.
--Adelgang, Osie Gabriel, ed. Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation. Whole Earth P, 2010. Rev. YES! (Winter 2011). A collection of personal essays by 14 women activists opposed to the human costs of “Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians from their homeland.” “…true stories that stress human rights over political expedience.”
--Bayoumi, Moustafa, ed. Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict. OR Books, 2010. The failed flotilla achieved global protest and demand that Israel halt its siege.
--Finkelstein, Norman. This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. Rev. The Washington Report on ME Affairs (Nov. 2010).: Finkelstein “demonstrates, as did the Goldstone Report and numerous human rights observers, that the Israel Defense Forces (IdF) was reckless of civilian casualties.”
--Goldberg, Alfred. Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide. Knopf, 2006. Rev. NYT Book Review (Nov. 12, 2006). About a friendship between an Arab and Goldberg, but criticizes G’s inability to tell his friend’s story. “The Middle East will remain one big prison as long as there
--Born a Refugee by Dixiane Hallaj, 2010. Fiction Tells the story of four brothers and their widowed mother living in the claustrophobic environment of their two room house in the Kalandia. More info at:http://radaris.com/p/Dixiane/Hallaj/
--Kaufman-Lacusta, Maxine. Refusing to Be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israelli Occupation. Ithaca P (UK), 2010. Rev. The Catholic Worker (Oct. Nov. 2010): “…material gleaned from many interviews, with a somewhat greater emphasis on Palestinian nonviolent activists, because their work is so little khnown.” Mubarak Awad, Sami Awad, Muhammad Jadarat, May Rosenfeld, Ido Khenin, Mustafa Shawkat Samha. Includes discussion of two ongoing nonviolent campaigns: the joint Israeli and Palestinian activism against the Wall, and the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bil’in, and four brief essays. Also rev. Fellowship (Fall 2010).
--Letters from Palestine: Palestinians Speak Out about Their Lives, Their Country, and the Power of Nonviolence. Kenneth Ring and Ghassan Abdullah. Wheatmark, 2010. A collection of 30 personal stories from Palestinians, inside and outside the occupied territories, that provide penetrating insights into their daily lives and thoughts.
--The Much Too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller
The official web site for The Much Too Promised Land, America's elusive search for Arab-Israeli peace, a nonfiction book by Aaron David Miller.
www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/muchtoopromisedland/ -
--Oz, Amos. How to Cure a Fanatic. 4th ed. Princeton UP, 2010. 2 essays and an interview. Oz and other Israeli writers have advocated for the Palestinian state since 1967.
--Polakow-Suransky, Sasha. The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Rev. Forward (6-18-10). Documents extent of Israel’s “secret relationship” with apartheid South Africa.
--Qumsiyeh, Mazin. Popular Resistance in Palestine: AHistory of Hope and Empowerment, 2011. . Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May-June 2010), “Mazin Qumsiyeh on the History and Practice of Nonviolent Palestinian Resistance.” http://www.qumsiyeh.org/popularresistanceinpalestine/ ). “I am planning a trip to the US in March”.
--Rhodes, Richard. The Twilight of the Bombs. Documents the current nuclear threat in the Middle East and North Korea; concludes an exhaustive, multi-volume history of nuclear weaponry, which he began in 1986 with The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
--ALICE WALKER, Alice Walker on “Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel”
Alice Walker was the first African American woman to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for fiction: author, poet and activist. . She was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer for her novel The Color Purple. She was interviewed by Amy Goodman April 13, 2010, about her new book Overcoming Speechlessness. One section of the book is about her visit to the West Bank and Gaza and her strong disapproval of Israeli tyranny and violence against the Palestinians. The interview includes a clip of her visit to Gaza following the Israeli onslaught in 2009.
--Wiles, Rich. Our Eyes: Photography by the Children and New Generation of Lajee Center. Lajee Center, 2008. Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010). Photos in 2007 by 42 young refugees in the Aida Camp in Bethlehem ages 11 to 18 about their lives. Also from the Lajee Center: The Boy and the Wall.
--“Military historian Geoffrey Wawro has made a valuable new contribution to the scholarship on the US relationship with the Arab/Muslim world. Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East is a must read. US leaders have always seen Israel as a strategic liability but short term domestic electoral imperatives — aka, the lobby — have forced policy makers into uncritical support of the Zionist entity against their better judgment. (Patrick Tyler reaches the same conclusion in his superb A World of Trouble) The costs of this relationship have been staggering. Though it is common for critics to point out the nearly $140 billion that the United States has given Israel in direct aid, the late Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer placed the real costs of US alliance with Israel at over $1.6 trillion between 1973-2002 alone! But the costs to the US economy have been even bigger….” [D: I did not record the name of the reviewer].

SECURE BORDERS FOR ISRAEL, END OF ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE AND RETURN TO 1967 BORDERS, Information and Calls to Action by Dick Bennett, 2-22-11

Contents
Contact President Obama for UN Settlement Resolution
Calls to Action in March, March 30 BDS DAY of Action
The Palestine Papers and Obama
The Goldstone Report
US Campaign to Stop the Occupation
Former Israeli Troops Oppose Occupation
Presbyterian Church Statement
Videos
Books

Action: Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution. Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, and Churches for Middle East Peace are speaking out. Add your voice.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
“Urge Obama to Support UN resolution on Israeli settlement expansion
A resolution is before the UN Security Council that opposes Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, echoing longstanding U.S. positions. But President Obama is under pressure to veto the resolution from political forces that seek to maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/noveto
Is this potentially a winnable fight? We argue it is:
Can US Support UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements? Yes We Can!
This is a winnable fight if we move the debate beyond the usual suspects.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/can-us-support-un-resolut_b_813233.html

Take Action on March 30th:
Join the 3rd Global BDS Day of Action! (from Anna Baltzer)

Above: Palestinian poster announcing Land Day, 1985.
Dear Dick,

As popular uprisings continue across the Middle East, boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) organizing is heating up in the United States!

March 2011 promises to be a month full of creative events and actions, starting with Israeli Apartheid Week and wrapping up with a BDS Day of Action on March 30th, Palestinian Land Day. Please be a part of it!

Palestinian Land Day, "Yom al-Ard," commemorates the Israeli military's 1976 killing of six young Palestinians as they protested the Israeli government's seizure of Palestinian land. The day has since become a symbol of Palestinian resistance to land theft, colonization, occupation and apartheid.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is calling on supporters around the world to unite in a March 30th Day of Action by organizing BDS activities supporting: divestment; consumer, cultural and academic boycott; legal action and media activism. Click here to read the full call.

Not sure what to do? There's something for everyone! Here are just a few ideas:

Host a "Stolen Beauty" House Party. Still cold outside? Gather friends and laptop computers for some online activism to promote the campaign to Boycott Ahava. Enjoy tea, cookies, and good company while you publicize Ahava's occupation profiteering. Click here to write CODEPINK for details.

Gather signatures for the "TIAA-CREF: Divest from Occupation" Campaign. Pass around this petition at work, at school, in your faith community or any institution where TIAA-CREF retirement plans are offered. Last fall, one professor at the University of Massachusetts collected 80 signatures from colleagues and staff. Can you beat that?

Write an article about BDS for your local newspaper, campus publication or faith community newsletter. Click here for an example from the divestment campaign at the University of California at San Diego. Click here for a clear, compelling piece by Naomi Klein.

Take your BDS campaign to the next level, with a flash mob, using the US Campaign's new BDS Flash Mob Step-by-Step How-To Kit!

Host a speaker to talk about BDS. Get a speaker from the Speakers Bureau of the Palestine Freedom Project, a US Campaign member group.

Host a public film screening to garner support for a local BDS campaign. Palestine Online Store, our member group, has a comprehensive selection here.

Keep your eyes peeled for productions fit for cultural boycott. For example, Adalah-NY, our member group, and others are preparing to boycott productions by the Israeli Philharmonic.
Many more creative activities can connect you with a promising global movement to end Israeli apartheid. Street theatre! Poetry readings! Even just holding a sign that reads "Boycott Israeli Apartheid" on a crowded street corner will build awareness toward future BDS campaigns.

Write to bdsdayofaction@bdsmovement.net to register your action on the global Day of Action calendar. Be sure to add your event to the US Campaign's online calendar, for publication in our biweekly email newsletter, Occupation End Notes.

As we promote BDS actions on Land Day, our government is preventing Palestinian leaders of nonviolent activism from advocating BDS in the United States. Last week the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem delayed a visa for Omar Barghouti, effectively canceling a spring tour to promote his book, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. Barghouti was the keynote speaker at our National Annual Organizers' Conference two years ago in Chicago.

Dick, click here for more information and ideas to take action in preparation for Land Day, and support Palestinians' human rights on their land!

This is an article of major importance. Ali Abunimah has been given access to the "Palestine Papers" - a trove of documents
Al Jazeera has gotten hold of by way of a leak. In this piece he examines and analyses the way the US position in regards to the 1967 border
has shifted in an ominous way under the leadership of Obama.

By effectively repudiating the Road Map "which has formed the basis of the "peace process" since 2003", writes Abunimah, the US under Obama "has backed away even from commitments made by the George W. Bush administration, and blown an irreparable hole in the already threadbare "two state solution".
The article demonstrates US refusal to stand by the international consensus regarding the 1967 border, and thereby opens the door to Israel's less-than-hidden ambitions to re-draw the border in such a way that many of its own Palestinian citizens will find themselves removed to "Palestine", so that Israel can keep its mission of creating an ethnically pure "Jewish State". Needless to say, the subjects of this ethnic cleansing are not to be consulted in the matter.

Abunimah concludes by saying: "This is not only catastrophic for Palestinian rights and the prospects for justice, but represents a return to nineteenth century notions, banished in the wake of two world wars, that population groups can be traded between states without their consent as if they were mere pieces on a chess board."

THE GOLDSTONE REPORT
Naomi Klein, “Goldstone’s Legacy for Israel.” The Nation (Feb. 14, 2011). “The Goldstone Report, with its uncompromising moral consistency, has revived the old-fashioned principles of universal human rights and international law….” Important essay.

US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION
January 14, 2011
“King laid the groundwork. Let us keep building!”
Dear Dick,
The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one we truly enjoy commemorating. To reflect on King's life and work is to find hope in the future, and reverence for grueling campaigns past.
Dr. King at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967
As we approach Dr. King's birthday, at a moment when Palestinians and many Israelis are mourning the Israeli military's killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah with U.S.-made tear gas during a nonviolent West Bank protest conducted in the spirit of MLK...

...and also commemorating the 1,400 dead after the Israeli military's attrocities in Gaza two years ago...
...and while our own country is mourning the dead and injured in Tucson...

We remember the lessons of Dr. King.

We remember his wise linkage of the three evils of poverty, racism, and militarism, and his understanding that fighting for civil rights and racial justice in our own country requires all of us to fight against war abroad at the same time. (Click here to read or listen to King's magnum opus on the subject, "Beyond Vietnam.")

In those days, it was Vietnam. Today it is Afghanistan and Iraq and, yes, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is funded, armed and enabled by our taxes and our government.

We affirm Dr. King's commitment to undoing those three evils together. We recognize that the $30 billion in military aid that the U.S. has promised Israel over a 10-year period must be better used (for example, to retrain 600,000 U.S. workers for new green jobs).

We understand that racism lies at the root of Israeli apartheid, now cemented in the segregation of everything from roads to courts of law. We know that crushing material poverty defines life in Gaza, due to Israel's U.S.-backed illegal siege that still eliminates the possibility to export goods and earn the basic income to rebuild a society.

The antidote to all three evils is creative nonviolent action. As the US Campaign turns 10 years old this year, we reaffirm our mission to build a nonviolent social movement that will defeat U.S. support for Israel's violent occupation and apartheid rule over Palestinians.

This coming weekend, while reflecting upon King's legacy and re-listening to his messages, let us rededicate our efforts to the emergence of a peaceful, just Middle East and a peaceful, just world.

In these efforts we are profoundly grateful to have you with us.

Yours,
Felicia Eaves & David Wildman
Co-Chairs

The US Campaign aims to change U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 43-year occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and that deny equal rights for all.
US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION | PO BOX 21539 | WASHINGTON, DC 20009
202-332-0994 | USCAMPAIGN@ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG | WWW.ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG

BREAKING THE SILENCE
Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence is a recently organized group of former Israeli toops—men and women—who are speaking up against the immoral and illegal behavior of the military in the occupied territories. See “Female Israeli Soldiers Breat the Silence,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010) 41.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ISRAEL, OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, AND MIDDLE EAST The Middle East Study Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) released its full report on Israel and Palestine on March 10, 2010, entitled “Breaking Down the Walls.” The report includes a call for a dismantlement of the occupation apparatus, including a stop to all settlement expansion. See “Presbyterian Church (USA) Unveils Report on Middle East Peace,” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010).

Video: "Occupation Has No Future"
--Through conversations with Israeli conscientious objectors, former soldiers, and Palestinians living under occupation, the film creates a survey of the current atmosphere in the State of Israel and the West Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-G5D7bLx1s

FILMS
--FPL HAS FILM PROMISES ON CHILDREN LIVING IN DIVERSE AREAS OF Israel and Palestine. Shot between 1997-2000.
--Budrus by Julia Bacha (2010) about a Palestinian village that resists Israeli occupation nonviolently, led by an ordinary citizen Ayed Morrar. Rev. In These Times (Nov. 2010): Bacha “lets the dynamic of resistance vs. militaristic oppression…speak for itself.”
--Miral, dir. By US/Jewish artist Julian Schnabel, to be released in 2011 by US/Jewish movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Rev. The Nation (Nov. 8, 2010). Film about the Dar Al-Tifl orphhanage, established in Jerusalem by Palestinian Hind Husseini, following Israel’s 1948 War for Independence.
----“American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein,” documentary film by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010). The filmmakers began filming in 1998, and accumulated 300 hours of footage, from which the film was made.

2010-2011 BOOKS: NONVIOLENT OPPOSITION TO THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTIANS
--Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation Ed by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin. Berghahn Books , 2010.
--Adelgang, Osie Gabriel, ed. Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation. Whole Earth P, 2010. Rev. YES! (Winter 2011). A collection of personal essays by 14 women activists opposed to the human costs of “Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians from their homeland.” “…true stories that stress human rights over political expedience.”
--Bayoumi, Moustafa, ed. Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict. OR Books, 2010. The failed flotilla achieved global protest and demand that Israel halt its siege.
--Finkelstein, Norman. This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. Rev. The Washington Report on ME Affairs (Nov. 2010).: Finkelstein “demonstrates, as did the Goldstone Report and numerous human rights observers, that the Israel Defense Forces (IdF) was reckless of civilian casualties.”
--Goldberg, Alfred. Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide. Knopf, 2006. Rev. NYT Book Review (Nov. 12, 2006). About a friendship between an Arab and Goldberg, but criticizes G’s inability to tell his friend’s story. “The Middle East will remain one big prison as long as there
--Born a Refugee by Dixiane Hallaj, 2010. Fiction Tells the story of four brothers and their widowed mother living in the claustrophobic environment of their two room house in the Kalandia. More info at:http://radaris.com/p/Dixiane/Hallaj/
--Kaufman-Lacusta, Maxine. Refusing to Be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israelli Occupation. Ithaca P (UK), 2010. Rev. The Catholic Worker (Oct. Nov. 2010): “…material gleaned from many interviews, with a somewhat greater emphasis on Palestinian nonviolent activists, because their work is so little khnown.” Mubarak Awad, Sami Awad, Muhammad Jadarat, May Rosenfeld, Ido Khenin, Mustafa Shawkat Samha. Includes discussion of two ongoing nonviolent campaigns: the joint Israeli and Palestinian activism against the Wall, and the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank village of Bil’in, and four brief essays. Also rev. Fellowship (Fall 2010).
--Letters from Palestine: Palestinians Speak Out about Their Lives, Their Country, and the Power of Nonviolence. Kenneth Ring and Ghassan Abdullah. Wheatmark, 2010. A collection of 30 personal stories from Palestinians, inside and outside the occupied territories, that provide penetrating insights into their daily lives and thoughts.
--The Much Too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller
The official web site for The Much Too Promised Land, America's elusive search for Arab-Israeli peace, a nonfiction book by Aaron David Miller.
www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/muchtoopromisedland/ -
--Oz, Amos. How to Cure a Fanatic. 4th ed. Princeton UP, 2010. 2 essays and an interview. Oz and other Israeli writers have advocated for the Palestinian state since 1967.
--Polakow-Suransky, Sasha. The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Rev. Forward (6-18-10). Documents extent of Israel’s “secret relationship” with apartheid South Africa.
--Qumsiyeh, Mazin. Popular Resistance in Palestine: AHistory of Hope and Empowerment, 2011. . Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May-June 2010), “Mazin Qumsiyeh on the History and Practice of Nonviolent Palestinian Resistance.” http://www.qumsiyeh.org/popularresistanceinpalestine/ ). “I am planning a trip to the US in March”.
--Rhodes, Richard. The Twilight of the Bombs. Documents the current nuclear threat in the Middle East and North Korea; concludes an exhaustive, multi-volume history of nuclear weaponry, which he began in 1986 with The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
--ALICE WALKER, Alice Walker on “Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel”
Alice Walker was the first African American woman to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for fiction: author, poet and activist. . She was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer for her novel The Color Purple. She was interviewed by Amy Goodman April 13, 2010, about her new book Overcoming Speechlessness. One section of the book is about her visit to the West Bank and Gaza and her strong disapproval of Israeli tyranny and violence against the Palestinians. The interview includes a clip of her visit to Gaza following the Israeli onslaught in 2009.
--Wiles, Rich. Our Eyes: Photography by the Children and New Generation of Lajee Center. Lajee Center, 2008. Rev. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2010). Photos in 2007 by 42 young refugees in the Aida Camp in Bethlehem ages 11 to 18 about their lives. Also from the Lajee Center: The Boy and the Wall.
--“Military historian Geoffrey Wawro has made a valuable new contribution to the scholarship on the US relationship with the Arab/Muslim world. Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East is a must read. US leaders have always seen Israel as a strategic liability but short term domestic electoral imperatives — aka, the lobby — have forced policy makers into uncritical support of the Zionist entity against their better judgment. (Patrick Tyler reaches the same conclusion in his superb A World of Trouble) The costs of this relationship have been staggering. Though it is common for critics to point out the nearly $140 billion that the United States has given Israel in direct aid, the late Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer placed the real costs of US alliance with Israel at over $1.6 trillion between 1973-2002 alone! But the costs to the US economy have been even bigger….” [D: I did not record the name of the reviewer].

EARTH IS WARMING(from Prof. Steve Boss 12-31-10) Here are some authoritative links: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/global-temperature-report-november-2010-from-the-university-of-alabama-at-huntsville/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/ http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2010/2010_Hansen_etal.pdf http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ http://www.islandpress.org/assets/library/73_jhchallengeglobalwarming.pdf(NOTE: This is an old paper - with data up to 1988. It states the '4 warmest years of the last century occurred during the 1980s) http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonescru/jones.html(NOTE: This article states "...1990s were the warmest complete decade in the series [1961-1990]..."; then asserts the "...period 2001-2009 (0.43°C above 1961-90 mean) is 0.19°C warmer than the 1991-2000 decade (0.24°C above 1961-90 mean)". 2010 is looming as one of the warmest years in the record; , the complete decade of the 2000's (2000-2009) was the warmest complete decade of record; warmer than the complete decade of the 1990s, which were in turn warmer than the complete decade of the 1980's...the decadal trend is thus established - 1980s=warm, 1990s=warmer, 2000s=warmest yet...30 years of data don't lie. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/climate_changeNote also from the article above that 9 of the 10 warmest years on the climate record occurred in the 2000s.

OIL THE LINK“Landscapes of War” by Terry Tempest Williams, The Progressive (Oct. 2010). Similarities between the BP oil spill and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The BP blowout and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are the same story. It is a parallel narrative that encompasses our politics, our economics, and our spiritual malaise. The plot is oil. The arc of the story moves from our complicity to our complacency.”

MILITARY MAJOR USER OF OILSanders, Barry. The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. AK P, 2009. Exposes the environmental consequences of US military practices, from fuel emissions to radioactive wastes to defoliation campaigns. The US military is the single-greatest contributor to the worldwide environmental crisis. “The military produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most immanent danger of extinction.” Google author/title for fuller information. Buy, study, and report the book. Buy several copies for friends.

Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Mapby Cleo Paskal As told by: Cleo Paskal Key Porter Books | December 7, 2009 | HardcoverThe Cold War was never this hot!

We live in interesting times. The biggest western economic institutions are crumbling, what were once marginalized voices are now dominating international negotiations, and touchstone climate events, such as the monsoon, are failing. Everywhere you look economic, geopolitical and environmental assumptions are being shaken to the core. The world is changing. Fast.Global Warring examines these trends by combining insightful economic and political analysis with the most likely environmental change scenarios. It identifies problem areas that could start conflicts (access to water and resources in Asia), economic trends that are shifting the balance of power (China's policy of nationalistic capitalism), and geopolitical realignments (the burgeoning strategic partnership between the United States and India).Award-winning writer and geopolitical expert Cleo Paskal makes sense of this overwhelming topic by dividing it into five sections: how seemingly impervious western nations, such as the United States, are shockingly vulnerable to hurricanes, storm surges and rising sea levels, and what that could mean for their internal stability and economic development; how the thawing Arctic is opening up a whole new arena for power politics as some of the world's biggest countries wrangle for control over vast resources, strategic shipping routes such as the Northwest Passage and geopolitical leverage; how changing precipitation patterns, extreme weather and water shortages are creating severe disruptions in India and China, and how that could affect their relations with each other, and the world; how rising sea levels may shift borders and alter the very notion of statehood, potentially challenging international law to the breaking point; and, finally, what could happen in coming decades, and how to avoid the worst of it.Paskal combines ten years of research; the latest findings from the Hadley Centre and the United Nations; and interviews with top political, security and economic strategists with her own extensive travel as a foreign correspondent. The result is a penetrating, accessible, compelling, and chilling reminder that Global Warring is not only coming, it's here."In a clear, comprehensive and alarming analysis, Cleo Paskal underlines the geopolitically disruptive potential of climate change. Arguably this is the biggest challenge to human society since the Ice Age or the Black Death and it is not clear we are any readier to respond adequately to ours than were our unfortunate ancestors to theirs." -- Guy Stanley, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University.Winner of The 2010 Grantham Prize for excellence in Reporting on the Environment

MILITARY, MILITARISM , WARS AGAINST PEOPLE, SPECIES, EARTH

Vandana Shiva: Sydney Peace Prize lecture

“Time to end war against the earth” VANDANA SHIVASydney Morning Herald, November 4, 2010

When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan . But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits - limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.A handful of corporations and of powerful countries seeks to control the earth's resources and transform the planet into a supermarket in which everything is for sale. They want to sell our water, genes, cells, organs, knowledge, cultures and future.The continuing wars in Afghanistan , Iraq and onwards are not only about "blood for oil". As they unfold, we will see that they are about blood for food, blood for genes and biodiversity and blood for water.The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names of Monsanto's herbicides - ''Round-Up'', ''Machete'', ''Lasso''. American Home Products, which has merged with Monsanto, gives its herbicides similarly aggressive names, including ''Pentagon'' and ''Squadron''. This is the language of war. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth.The war against the earth begins in the mind. Violent thoughts shape violent actions. Violent categories construct violent tools. And nowhere is this more vivid than in the metaphors and methods on which industrial, agricultural and food production is based. Factories that produced poisons and explosives to kill people during wars were transformed into factories producing agri-chemicals after the wars.The year 1984 woke me up to the fact that something was terribly wrong with the way food was produced. With the violence in Punjab and the disaster in Bhopal , agriculture looked like war. That is when I wrote The Violence of the Green Revolution and why I started Navdanya as a movement for an agriculture free of poisons and toxics.Pesticides, which started as war chemicals, have failed to control pests. Genetic engineering was supposed to provide an alternative to toxic chemicals. Instead, it has led to increased use of pesticides and herbicides and unleashed a war against farmers. The high-cost feeds and high-cost chemicals are trapping farmers in debt - and the debt trap is pushing farmers to suicide. According to official data, more than 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.Making peace with the earth was always an ethical and ecological imperative. It has now become a survival imperative for our species.Violence to the soil, to biodiversity, to water, to atmosphere, to farms and farmers produces a warlike food system that is unable to feed people. One billion people are hungry. Two billion suffer food-related diseases - obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cancers.There are three levels of violence involved in non-sustainable development. The first is the violence against the earth, which is expressed as the ecological crisis. The second is the violence against people, which is expressed as poverty, destitution and displacement. The third is the violence of war and conflict, as the powerful reach for the resources that lie in other communities and countries for their limitless appetites.When every aspect of life is commercialised, living becomes more costly, and people are poor, even if they earn more than a dollar a day. On the other hand, people can be affluent in material terms, even without the money economy, if they have access to land, their soils are fertile, their rivers flow clean, their cultures are rich and carry traditions of producing beautiful homes and clothing and delicious food, and there is social cohesion, solidarity and spirit of community.The elevation of the domain of the market, and money as man-made capital, to the position of the highest organising principle for societies and the only measure of our well-being has led to the undermining of the processes that maintain and sustain life in nature and society.The richer we get, the poorer we become ecologically and culturally. The growth of affluence, measured in money, is leading to a growth in poverty at the material, cultural, ecological and spiritual levels.The real currency of life is life itself and this view raises questions: how do we look at ourselves in this world? What are humans for? And are we merely a money-making and resource-guzzling machine? Or do we have a higher purpose, a higher end?I believe that ''earth democracy'' enables us to envision and create living democracies based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all cultures - a just and equal sharing of this earth's vital resources, and sharing the decisions about the use of the earth's resources.Earth democracy protects the ecological processes that maintain life and the fundamental human rights that are the basis of the right to life, including the right to water, food, health, education, jobs and livelihoods.We have to make a choice. Will we obey the market laws of corporate greed or Gaia's laws for maintenance of the earth's ecosystems and the diversity of its beings?People's need for food and water can be met only if nature's capacity to provide food and water is protected. Dead soils and dead rivers cannot give food and water.Defending the rights of Mother Earth is therefore the most important human rights and social justice struggle. It is the broadest peace movement of our times.Dr Vandana Shiva is an Indian physicist, environmentalist and recipient of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. This is an edited version of her speech at the Sydney Opera House lst night.

R EISENBERG PRESENTS Regina Eisenberg regina@stationrelations.com | 510.550.1706 January 18, 2011 The effects of war and war preparations on the environment, while profound, have been largely overlooked. Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives. (1/60) Producers: Alice and Lincoln Day Fund for Sustainable Tomorrows Dear colleague: We are pleased to announce the release of Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War in time for your Earth Day programming. While the profound effects of war on our planet have been largely overlooked in Earth Day discussions, this one-hour documentary brings war explicitly into the environmental conversation. The scale of environmental damage over the last half century is unprecedented. Falling water tables, shrinking forest cover, declining species diversity all presage ecosystems in distress. These trends are now widely acknowledged as emanating from forces of humanity's own making; ironically however, war, that most destructive of human behaviors, is commonly bypassed. In all its stages, from the production of weapons through combat to cleanup and restoration, war entails actions that pollute land, air, and water, destroy biodiversity, and drain natural resources. Yet the environmental damage occasioned by war and preparation for war is routinely underestimated, underreported, even ignored. The environment remains war's "silent casualty." Using archival material from the Civil War and World Wars I and II, up to Vietnam, Bosnia, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and specialist and eyewitness accounts, Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives examines the impact of war and its toll on the Earth's ecosystems. It traces the variety of damage caused by weaponry at all stages, from production and testing, through combat, to cleanup. Revealing the many ways war pollutes and degrades the environment—from land mines and cluster bombs that destroy farm lands and disrupt agricultural practices to damage to water tables caused by the bombing of oil refineries and chemical plants, the documentary is eye-opening. Reviewers of Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives invariably claim to have been greatly moved by the documentary and to have learned a lot from watching it. Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives is produced by Alice and Lincoln Day, Fund for Sustainable Tomorrows. The documentary is distributed to public television stations by NETA. Funded by The Wallace Genetic Foundation, The Manna Foundation, and generous support of individual donors, local underwriting is permissible. Please contact me if you have questions. I’ll be in touch with you about your carriage plans during the next months. A fact sheet follows. Very truly yours, Regina Regina Eisenberg R Eisenberg Presents regina@stationrelations.com | 510.550.1706 2340 Powell Street, Suite 333, Emeryville, CA 94608 R EISENBERG PRESENTS Regina Eisenberg regina@stationrelations.com | 510.550.1706 fact sheet Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War Program Summary: The scale of environmental damage over the last half century is unprecedented. Falling water tables, shrinking forest cover, declining species diversity all presage ecosystems in distress. These trends are now widely acknowledged as emanating from forces of humanity's own making; ironically however, war, that most destructive of human behaviors, is commonly bypassed. Episodes/Length: 1/60 Rights Broadcast: March 26, 2011 - March 25, 2013 Unlimited Releases/2 Years VOD: No Non-Commercial Cable: Granted School Record: 7-Day) Video: SD 4:3. NOLA Code: SLWL )) K1 SD Feed for Record: Saturday, March 26 , 2011, 1100 – 1200ET/SD 07 Promo: Interviewees: All of the 13 persons interviewed in the film are specialists in their fields, and in many cases also eye-witnesses to the environmental devastation of war and its impact on all living things. They include Lester Brown (an internationally acknowledged authority on global environmental conditions), Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr. (USA-ret., former President, Monterey Institute for International Studies and Director, Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies), Thomas Lovejoy (biologist and President, The Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, and founder of the public television series, "Nature") as well as: a prize-winning novelist and former combat medic in Vietnam, a forestry scientist with extensive experience working in Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Sudan, and Liberia with the United Nations Post-Conflict Assessment and Crisis Management Unit, a climate scientist, a professor of environmental history, a professor of environmental studies, a specialist in defense and environmental policy issues, an epidemiologist and a physician, both with research experience in war-related illnesses, and the director of a large-scale program assessing the clean-up costs of nuclear and chemical weapons programs around the world. Outreach: The public television release of Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives will be supported by several large, influential NGO's including: Global Exchange, Global Green Doctors For Social Responsibility and Care2.com. In March and April 2011, the program's release will be the subject of e-blasts though newsletters of participating NGO's. The documentary is Finalist for Wildscreen, the world's largest and most prestigious international wildlife and environmental film festival. It is, also, Official Selection of Filmanthropy Festival, which showcases films that inspire, educate, raise awareness and motivate so that the audience may, through their eyes, open their minds and their hearts to creating a better world for all. Producer: Alice and Lincoln Day Fund for Sustainable Tomorrows

PENTAGON VS. GREEN JOBS; CONVERSIONhttps://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12b7e194ef308d9d We Have to Trim the Bloated Pentagon Budget and Use the Cash for a 'Green Dividend' to Create Good Jobs How can we come out of this recession with a manufacturing sector and a workforce that are globally competitive, that produce things that people need in the new green economy?

DYER VS. SHIVA AND PENTAGON PLANNING--Dyer, Gwynne. Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats. Interv. Democracy Now). Basic fact: planet warming. A 1 percent rise in temp will produce 10 percent reduction in food. Without drastic reduction in C02 the planet will heat 4 degrees by 2060. So Dyer recommends geoengineering (SRM: Solar Radiation Management) to give us time.. In contrast, Vandana Shiva (Soil Not Oil) urges drastic changes in economic system esp.from corporate to small agriculture. She urges agreement to Universal Declaration on the Rights of the Earth. Pentagon already has plans for warming wars over food and water. For example, because Turkey is controlling the Tigris and Euphrates at their sources, Iraq would be at war with Turkey were not Iraq so dysfunctional. The US Quadrennial Defense Review 2010 is the first QDR to evaluate warming’s threat to US security. That is, the Bush admin. denied climate change while militarily preparing for it. See ecology refugees: Mexican and Central American refugees to increase, so the likelihood of a Soviet Berlin Wall across the US/Mex border and associated wars is increasing (Dick)

In 1974, because of surging energy prices, the heads of 23 democracies lost their positions. Publics indifferent to the immense danger impending from global warming caused by coal and oil, get in a rampage over an oil price rise , and leaders’ electoral heads roll. This reality is an opportunity for decreasing militarism, empire, and wars.

A major remedy to the cost of gasoline at the pump is never mentioned, have you noticed? Reducing the militaries of the world, of which the USA has the largest. The US military is not only the largest single source of greenhouse gases and warming, it is also consequently and specifically the largest single user of oil. Except for the nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, the entire vehicle inventory runs on oil. It’s the world’s enormous gas-guzzling vampire. Barry Sanders in his recent book, The Green Zone, gives us the details. The Army, Navy, and Air Force have ninety-two different kinds of aircraft, for example, and aircraft fuel is both particularly polluting and expensive.

The pressure on the supply of oil to the US is sharply intensified by the demands of the military, especially as oil sources diminish. The US military has some 800 bases abroad in over 100 countries, and some 6000 in the U.S. and its territories. These bases are intended to ensure us energy resources necessary for empire, that is, for the military. But the military itself is a major cause of the need for the resources, and in addition our military inspires resentments everywhere they are.. Shrinking these bases would simultaneously reduce enemies, global warming, the demand for fuel, and the cost of gas.

The Green Zone makes a powerful case against the military as a major contributor of greenhouse gasses, CO2, and global warming. It also provides us with salient arguments and data for talking with people who are primarily concerned about their taxes and the prices of gasoline. Our slogan can be; Reduce the Military: Reduce Demand: Reduce Price.of Gas.References:Llewellyn King. “Oil Could Decide 2012.” ADG (1-24-11). Sanders, Barry. The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. 2009.